Samsung to Shut Down Mobile Music and E-Book Service

In the latest sign of Samsung’s struggle to offer attractive apps, Samsung Electronics said it is pulling the plug on its proprietary music service as well as e-book service beginning July 1.

The company didn’t elaborate on the reason behind the move only to say that it is “striving for service differentiation and customer value enhancement.” Samsung will remain committed to offering a wide range of content choices to customers through its own and partnered services, a company spokesman said by e-mail. This doesn’t impact the company’s recently launched Milk music streaming service in the U.S.

The planned shutdown leaves the Samsung Hub, the company’s “multimedia content store,” with just three types of contents available: education, video and gaming. The company declined to comment on whether the remaining services will face a similar fate.

Samsung Hub was launched as a part of the company’s ambitious push to lure customers to its own software but it has failed to gain much traction as similar services and content are available for customers through different channels and app developers.

In March last year, the company marketed Samsung Hub as its “integrated” content service that provides all of the five things – music, videos, books, games and learning content. Samsung Hub was basically created to sell more Galaxy S4 smartphones which was launched back then. Samsung Hub came preloaded on the Galaxy S4.

But as it turns out, Samsung Hub no longer comes preloaded on the Galaxy S5, the succeeding model to the Galaxy S4. “Our services will remain available as individual apps rather than in one, single bundled storefront,” the spokesman said. He added that existing users of the Samsung Hub through the Galaxy S4 phone will continue to have access to the service.

For those in Korea, they get an extra bonus: both the music and e-book service will continue to live on for users in Korea. Samsung accounted for 66.1% of South Korea’s smartphone market in 2013, with Apple accounting for just 7.6%, according to research firm Gartner.

Having its own software content has been one of the biggest challenges for the South Korean company with its expertise mainly coming from hardware production. Industry observers say that the company may streamline some of its mobile app services in a bid to focus on selected areas like gaming.